Proposed Law Would Force New Lawyers to Perform “Internship” Before Being Licensed

Just about every other profession requires their members to have practical training before they are allowed to become licensed to start their profession.

Doctors must perform internships that take years. Dentists, Nurses, School Psychologists, Mental Health Professionals, all must work in their field and train under experienced members of their profession before they can receive a state license to begin their profession. However, this has never been the case with lawyers.

Lawyers are allowed to go to law school, and take a written exam and if they pass it they can begin to “practice law”. The major problem with this is that this allows new lawyers to “practice” on their clients. These new lawyers often do not have the experience or knowledge as to how to properly represent a client. This leads to clients suffering greatly.

The persons that suffer the most due to this policy are the persons who have the least amount of money to afford a lawyer. This happens because newer lawyers, hungry for clients will charge low fees to get the “experience”. The problem is that the clients are often being “experimented on” because the young lawyers do not know much if anything about the court process or how to successfully represent a client. This is not because the young lawyers do not want to do a good job. This is primarily because most law schools do not require their students to actually spend a period of time working under the supervision of experienced lawyers who could “show them the ropes”.

It is not clear why law schools are not required to do this. All that is clear is that California is now considering requiring all lawyers to undergo some sort of “internship” before they can become a lawyer. This law needs to be passed to protect all members of our society who should not be used as “experiments” so a new lawyer can learn how to do his job.

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